Nite Train to Calcutta

Einstein was right. If you travel fast enough, time will slow down. The Amristar Howrah Mail Express left Varanasi @ 5.p.m on Friday. We traveled for, I'm sure, three days, but we arrived in Calcultta (now called Kolcata) at 8 A.M. Saturday, only 16 hours later. Calcutta, developed by the the East India Trading Company of Great Britain in the 1700s and used as a springboard for eventual domination when empire trumped, or perhaps supported, trading, has a population of 13,000,000 people (an additional 4,000,000 entering the city for daily work) and is, although disputed by Delhians, India's second largest city.
The ride was bedeviled by lows, sprinkled with a high or two. The lows: I ended up sharing the compartment with three other Indian men who spoke limited English and perhaps, since they didn't speak to each other, limited everything; at the second stop after leaving Varanasi, four male students entered, uninvited, our compartment and sat with us (I learned that students rode free); though assured there was, au contrare, there was no dining car, not even an opportunity to buy an on board snack; having departed from the Varanasi train station where, last week, a terrorist bomb killed 18 people, while on board, I learned that this same train, four days ago, was hijacked by Maoist separatists. The highs: the four students, thankfully, departed before I took a sleeping pill and had 6-7 hours of semi-interrupted sleep; none of the Indians snored and, as far as I can tell, neither did I.

Just gorgeous-that's an apt description of the Sonar Bangla Sheraton Hotel, Calcutta's newest, in which I am staying, with service supreme. Had my first Indian tennis match. The hotel pro is on vacation but Chetek, one of the spa-gym directors played with me, warning me (it was no exaggeration) that he was not an expert tennis player. I think that I grew his confidence (though shortlived) when I admitted to being 70 years old. As soon as we started to play, out came a ball boy who picked up balls while taking delight in the trouncing I gave Chetek. During a break, Chetek, the ball boy and I had a chance to talk politics, terrorism and the like. I learned much more about the Maoists, who are semi civilized separatists from the State of Bihar, as contrasted to every day terrorists who they believed to be , essentially, Muslims. Chetek offered to play with me again tomorrow for free if I would give him some pointers.

Upon leaving the business center where this is being typed, I passed what seemed to be a cocktail party. An Indian man said hello, asked me where I was from and seemed genuinely interested in pursuing the chance encounter. We sat in the lobby and he told me that he was with Seagrams Spirits and was attending a Seagrams dealers conference. I told him of my father's involvement with retail liquor during my childhood which seemed to interest him. He then smoothly moved to the next subject which was his sexual preference for males, particularly white males. I quickly straightened him out on my straightness which he took in stride. We talked about the acceptability of gays in the U.S. He told me that homosexuality in Calcutta (all of India I suspect) faces zero tolerance. I can only conclude that he felt safer pursuing obvious tourists rather than Indians who might be less understanding than I and publish a description of the event on a blog. And I thought it was a physical attraction.
I hired a hotel driver who drove me around the city. I stopped from time to time, at various active locations like Park Street, a cross between Oak Street and Michigan Avenue, stopping in several shops to look at prices. Observation-I did not enter a single shop that was not guarded by a uniformed guard who let you in and out. Even drug stores pretended to be Bulgari's. Another observation-The glass of scotch that the hotel will charge any where between $10 and $15, a restaurant will charge $1.50 to $2.00.

And speaking of prices, before leaving the States I followed what appeared to be sound advise and bought a mobile phone that would work in Turkey and India which cost me around $175 and around $6.00 per minute to Chicago. It did'nt work, one of my luckier disappointments. I bought another Nokia phone in Delhi for $75.00. Phone calls to Riverwoods cost around $0.08 per minute. I'd rather be lucky than .....you know.